Atychiphobia: The Story Success and Failure — REVISED

I like to think of myself as a reasonably ambitious person. I got into a really good college which, from what I gather from those who’ve talked to me, means I have a much better chance of getting a job right after graduation. I mean, that’s what “society” says, right? The society I feel indebted to has unspoken rules that in reality have no bearing on the success a person experiences. According to this society I’ve grown up in and manifested, in order to be successful, I must get a college degree from an esteemed university and begin working the second I’ve graduated. It says the measure of my success is how much money I make, how big my house is, or how expensive my car is. It makes known the only way to move upward in life is to make connections with other measurably successful people. It doesn’t allow for error, and I shouldn’t make decisions that don’t benefit the bottom line alone. This all points to the assumption that the success I accrue isn’t really mine, it’s the success of the system. It’s this society people are raised in that cultivates a fear of failure. It’s this system that has conditioned me into avoiding failure at all costs, and as a result has inhibited me from growing into the intellectual I want to be, the intellectual I know I can be.

This “avoidance/fear of failure” is known as atychiphobia. It has manifested itself inside me as a form of self-preservation. It’s made itself known and has become the most important aspect of myself when I am trying anything new, working towards a goal, or just attempting to better myself mentally, physically, and spiritually. It prevents me from exploring, keeps me in check when I stray too far from the status quo, and makes my growth into a fully functioning, productive adult much more challenging than it needs to be. The root of this atychiphobia in me comes from learning. Learning new skills through model building, learning to sing and make music, and just learning in general through education. These experiences are the main source of failure for me. To learn something new requires commitment, patience, and the expectation of failure. Knowing that failure is inevitable in these areas has made them the most influential parts of my identity when it comes to me growing into an individual. The fact that I’m afraid to fail in these areas further confirms the conclusion that my fear of failure has prevented me from that growth I so desperately want and need.

When I was thirteen I experienced my first personal failure. It was a model plane I had built and entered into the Kern County Fair. I had always loved planes, ever since my dad first introduced me to a simulator on his computer. It’s fair to say I have a fascination with airplanes. My dad had airplane models, and I took what any young person would see as a logical next step in a fascination — taking up a hobby. For most kids it’s a sport or a musical instrument. Mine was building model airplanes. This first attempt (as with many people’s first attempts at something new) was a disaster [5]. It looked awful. It fell apart almost as soon as I finished it. The paint was all wrong and even from a distance it looked off. This was my first experience with personal failure. Sure, I had failed with my team at basketball games or messed up on a group project or gotten in trouble with friends. However, I had never, up until that point, put my effort solely into a project, without help, and completely and utterly failed. It stuck with me.

No one laughed at my model. I even got a ribbon. But I walked down the aisles of glass-enclosed shelves showing off everyone else’s entries. I felt like mine was the worst one there. I felt like every time someone passed by it, they would look at it with a sort of amusement. I was embarrassed. I wished I had never built it in the first place. I became hyper-aware of every flaw not just on my model, but myself. This is the most detrimental part of fearing failure: most times, it’s not a fear of ridicule from others, but instead a ridicule of one’s self. It’s not something that can be easily overcome when the “audience” is removed from the equation. It comes from a deeply-rooted shame in one’s self, for whatever reason, that can’t simply be overcome with a quick “self-help” article online.

Atychiphobia is classified as the “irrational fear of failure”. Symptoms of atychiphobia can include “…a panicky feeling accompanied by increased breathing, mental anxiety, headache, tightening of stomach muscles, [and] nausea,” according to Anup Kochhar’s book The Failure Project: The Story of Man’s Greatest Fear [3]. Kochhar goes on to describe the lifestyle of one with atychiphobia as one of zero-risk, and then arrives at a rather stark realization: there is no cure for atychiphobia. Kochhar then described atychiphobia as a protection mechanism used to protect the individual from past unpleasant experiences. I had always known my fear of failure was a defense mechanism. I would tell myself it was to avoid the ridicule of those around me, without any evidence of there being any ridicule in the first place. In reality, it is a defense mechanism against my own shortcomings, an outlet allowing me to not have to come to terms with those shortcomings.

It’s difficult for me to look inside themselves and identify my shortcomings. It leaves me vulnerable to exploitation, whether by myself or someone else. Those shortcomings can be weaponized against me. No one wants their deficiencies used against them. Most don’t even want to acknowledge them, as acknowledging their presence means there’s work to be done to fix them. I’m very aware of my shortcomings. Identifying them is the first step. But my fear of failing to even improve myself is crippling enough to keep me from fixing those deficiencies.

Every day growing up, I was held to a standard I felt I couldn’t reach. I was required to get good grades, have a higher reading level than anyone else in my class, and be a well-rounded student. I was being fed information and told to memorize it. This “banking” style of education, as Paulo Freire described it in his 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed [2], is a form of intellectual oppression. It prevents the student from finding knowledge, which “… emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world…” [Freire 72]. Instead, the banking concept has the teacher, the one in the position of power, bestowing the knowledge they deem as being worth knowing upon the students. The students are, in Freire’s words, no more than receptacles for the teacher to fill. This banking style didn’t allow me to be a pupil, I was a receptacle. I wasn’t an active participant in my self-realization. I wasn’t involved in the information finding or the questioning of the importance of the information and how it relates to other knowledge. I was told where to sit, what to read, and every Friday I was quizzed on how well I remembered it. This education system beat down anyone who questioned it. It made me fear speaking up and told me it was wrong to be an active participant in my own education. This system prevented me from growing in all aspects of myself. I was molded into a person I wasn’t. This prevented me from addressing my shortcomings in a conducive and safe environment and instead let them grow and take over more aspects of my life. It wasn’t the model plane that made me fear failure. It was the years growing up, being told that doing anything outside of the ordinary was wrong and to even ask about it was incomprehensible.

Music has always been a part of my life, and its impact on me is on par with my education. But growing up loving music and wanting to pursue it as a life-long career were two different things. I always wanted to keep music in my life. But there’s this societal stigma around pursuing music as a profession. I was told over and over when I was younger that there’s no chance of success in music. That in order to pursue music, one must be willing to give up all other luxuries in life, like a stable income which would provide very basic necessities. I was told over and over again that there was no money in music education, that no matter how bad I wanted it I would be better off pursuing a profitable career, one that would allow me to live without fear of being able to cover a single unexpected medical bill. I was conditioned to fear following my dreams. It broke me to realize I couldn’t do what I loved. I began to fear my own desires. They’re not good enough for this society I’ve been exposed to, why should I even be interested in them then? I was made to fear stepping outside the box set up by those in positions of power.

A fear of failure is often coupled with the desire to please everyone. The fearing failure part, as discussed earlier, is a defense mechanism used to protect the individual from their own personal scrutiny. The desire to please is meant to give the individual the false sense of friendship or acquaintance with others. One’s desire to please everyone else usually leads to the only person important in that person’s life being disappointed — themself. I find myself looking to please others before I focus on myself. I would always worry about how other people would feel about my decisions, no matter how miniscule or life changing they would be. These decisions were mine to make, but I would make them so as to offend as few people as possible. This desire to please others always left me with the short stick. I was compromising myself, my passions, and my future so as to not make anyone dislike me or disapprove of what I felt was best for myself. I began to ignore what made me happy. Instead of focusing on making myself happy, I would focus on what would make me as successful as possible in everyone else’s eyes.

I have always known that failure is a conduit for that societal success, a means to reach the goals set out by “my” society. I knew the common saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” since before preschool. But that success everyone is working towards is unattainable. That societal success is perfection. Perfection, more specifically the word ‘perfect’, is defined as “having no flaws or defects”[4]. What society holds as the ultimate “success” is an image of perfection — having no flaws, no deficiencies, and lacking in nothing. No one on planet earth has ever been perfect, and yet society holds people to standards not a single person has ever met. Perfectionism leaves no space for compromise. A perfect person cannot fail, therefore a successful person doesn’t fail. They succeed. At least, that’s what’s being taught every day in school rooms around the country. We all know this isn’t true in the real world, but in the mind of young, impressionable kids who want to be successful, all the mind can grasp is that there can be no failure. This prevented me from accepting failure as a form of growth growing up. Despite knowing those sayings, despite knowing no one on earth had ever been perfect or will ever be perfect, it wasn’t enough for me to be just adequate. I had to be perfect or I wouldn’t succeed. Ultimately, personal success is the end goal. This perfectionism hindered my ability to accept change and realize failure for what it was. It kept me from embracing failure as a form of developing into a functioning member of society.

Many people have accepted this notion of perfection and have found ways to reach their goals, despite how imperfect they are. Many more people cannot accept anything less than that impossible perfection. I am one of them. This mindset hinders the individual, keeping them from growth and new experiences. It shuts the individual down before they even start. One example of perfectionism compounding the fear of failure has been found in the businessmen and women in Nigeria who are looking to improve their country and change their lives for the better. In a 2016 paper titled The Fear of Business Failure and Government’s Role in Supporting Entrepreneurs in Nigeria, Olowu Akinseye U. and Taye-Faniran Adebowale F. examine the relationship between the entrepreneur and the government and dissect the economic disruption that is caused when entrepreneurs are too afraid to present new ideas and solutions to problems within the country[1]. The solutions provided to inhibit or erase the fear of business failure in Nigeria largely revolves around mitigating risks as well as establishing more business education and governmental policies to support those looking to start a business. These specific solutions provided by Akinseye and Adebowale can be scaled up to a much more general degree to address a more general “fear of failure”. Solutions such as mitigating the pressure and risk one would experience when undergoing a task where failure is possible would likely reduce the anxiety and uncertainty atychiphobia can bring. Improving mental health education and teaching success psychology can allow those with atychiphobia to better understand their “…abnormal, unwarranted, and persistent fear.”

What does this paper mean for those who aren’t entrepreneurs in Nigeria? Is fear of failure really without a cure, as Kocchar has claimed? Or is there a way society can adopt changes to better understand atychiphobia and provide solutions to mitigate its effects, like Akinseye and Adebowale claim? The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for that. All I can speak for is myself. I’ve read self-help articles and made checklists. I’ve talked with my close friend and vocal coach, who gave me a very useful technique to manage personal failure and improvement. But this fear of failure won’t go away.

The havoc it has wreaked is, in some places, irreversible. I used it as a defense mechanism and it prevented me from addressing my own personal deficiencies, leaving me with flaws that I’m not sure I can fix. I grew to fear my own passions as they aren’t profitable or prestigious in today’s society, leaving me without any drive to pursue what I have a love for. I felt the need to please others before myself, which prevented me from focusing on my well-being and intellectual enrichment. Perfectionism left me no space for compromise, preventing me from accepting failure as a normal part of life and a form of growth. Where did it all start? Well, it never really did “start”, it’s always been there. Incidents like the model plane only brought it to my attention. Then it took hold and began controlling my every decision and action. It held me back from developing into a strong, determined, intelligent intellectual.

Society isn’t solely to blame for how toxic and disingenuous success theory is. We as human beings, as members of society, have the ability to change what is seen as successful. Success shouldn’t be measured by how rich a person is, their level of education, or how many other successful people they rub shoulders with. Success needs to be measured on an individual basis. Success is as unique as the person who finds it. We as people can change the meaning of success. We can tear down the unrealistic expectations set forth by the rules we all follow to become successful. Success can’t be something one works towards alone. Collaboration, communication, sympathy, and better education where the student is involved in the learning process can help tear down the unattainability of perfect success. When we are able to make success attainable to all and destigmatize failure, the fear of failure will go away with it. Removing the impossible expectations coupled with success and the shame that surrounds failure will undoubtedly help those who fear failure most.

Works Cited

1. Akinseye, Olowu U. and Taye-Faniran F. Adebowale. “The Fear of Business Failure and Government’s Role in Supporting Entrepreneurs in Nigeria.” IFE Psychologia: An International Journal 24 (2016): 318–330.
2. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.
3. Kochhar, Anup. The Failure Project The Story Of Man’s Greatest Fear. India, Leadstart Publishing Pvt Limited, 2017.
4. “perfect.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2021. Web. 9 April 2021
5. Powell, A. (2021, March 7). Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff [Web log post]. Retrieved April 10, 2021, from https://medium.com/model-airplanes-and-applying-artistic-concepts-to/dont-sweat-the-small-stuff-da6e973a5de7